425: Week 5 Matchups

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zacherretha j J. Zacherreson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyeson, the editor in chief at FanDuel and at Number five dot com in this episode four hundred and twenty five of the Late Round podcast many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Last week was kind of all over the place, but I feel like that was the case for all of fantasy football, not just the guys that I talked about on this show. The quarterback streaming choices were fine, especially Ryan Fitzpatrick given his fourth quarter numbers, but I missed big time on Tom Brady, so the quarterback position was just kind of a wash. I was wrong about the Texans offense for the most part, too, especially Brandon Cooks. I talked about Cooks yesterday on the ten Trend Show, but that was a pretty surprising result, especially when you look at how much he was on the field. I also got the result of Jerry Judy wrong, but I think the process was actually fine there. He only caught two balls. One of them just happened to be a big touchdown. But I was right to be bullish on Mike Davis. Some of the deep plays that I noted a wide receiver did fine considering there were waiver wire guys. T Y Hilton didn't do a whole lot, but most importantly guys Robert Bleepin' Tanyan. I talked up Tanyan, Schultz, and Ebron as my three tight end streamers, and Ebron didn't play. Schultz did well, but Robert Tanyan was looking like Tony Gonzalez out there. That big three touchdown day from him that helped me out last week too, I'd say overall, not a bad week. We're onto week five now. Before get into this week's players that I'm highering lower on versus the consensus, We've got another FanDuel Podcast Network Listener League contest and I wanted you to know about it. It's just five dollars to enter. There's two thousand dollars in prizes, and you can enter up the three lineups to join. Just go to FanDuel dot Com Slash League slash Listener League. Eligibility restrictions apply. My favorite quarterback streamer this week is Teddy Bridgewater. We saw a strong outing from him last week, so we know that he's got it in him. But this week's game against Atlanta is even juicier than last week's contest. According to Fandels Sportsbook, the Panthers Falcons game has a fifty four and a half point over under and just a one and a half point spread, so the game should be close and it should be fairly high scoring. That's good news for Teddy since Atlanta ranks dead last and adjusted fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks this year. So I like Bridgewater a lot this week, and I'm actually playing him in a few leagues myself. Kirk Cousins is also in play. One of the things that I like about this matchup with the Seahawks is the fact that number one, it's projected to be high scoring. Fandel Sportsbook has this games over under at fifty seven and a half. That's very good. But the Vikings are also pretty big underdogs, which means they're going to be forced to throw more or they have the potential to throw more, and they've been a pretty run heavy team. And then there's the matchup. As I talked about on the ten Trends episode, Seattle's given up five hundred more yards to wide receivers this year than any other team. Teams are targeting wide receivers against Seattle at the highest rate in the NFL. Meanwhile, Kirk Cousins has been targeting his wide receivers at an above average rate this year, and he's throwing it down the field fifteen plus air yards at the absolute highest rate in the league. The Vikings are going to have to keep up with Russell Wilson and that could unlock Kirk Cousins a bit. So I like him this week off the waiver wire. And then there's Justin Herbert. Similar to the Vikings, The Chargers want to be this ground and pound team. The Chargers rank dead last in neutral script pass to rush ratio. The Vikings are thirty first, But they may not be able to do that against the Saints team that's been pretty good against the run over the last season or so, and one that's an eight and a half point favorite on the year. New Orleans ranks is the thirteenth best matchup against quarterbacks in terms of adjusted fantasy points allowed. Not that that really matters, but it's not like they're on the other extreme as a super tough matchup. I like Cousins in Bridgewater more, but Herbert should be fine this week now. I missed out on Tom Brady last week, but I'm gonna go back to him again this week as someone who I think could be benched. I'd be fine playing both Bridgewater and Cousins ahead of Tom Brady. He's got touchdown regression coming, which is what I talked about earlier this week on the fifteen Transactions episode, and he's facing the Bears. Chicago ranks right now is the fifth toughest matchup and adjusted Fantasy points allowed, and this game has one of the lower over unders on the week at forty four and a half. I don't love that it's a Thursday night game because of how weird those games sometimes go, but Brady to me is more of a mid to low end QB two this week, and then I would not be playing Carson Wentz against Pittsburgh. Obviously. The matchup just looks tough at first glance, but on the season, Pittsburgh has by far the highest pressure rate in football. The Eagles have allowed one of the highest sack rates in the league this year too, and wins him so doesn't have many healthy weapons and he's really gotten by on rushing the last couple of weeks. He still has just two passing touchdowns over his last three games, and he's averaging two hundred and nine yards per contest over those two games. That's not great. He just has a rushing touchdown in three straight contests, but that's not something that we can bank on. So I don't like Carson Wentz. It doesn't sound great for Raheem Mostert this week, which means Jeric McKinnon is a lower end RB one or maybe a higher end RB two. He saw over eighty two percent of the team's running back rushes in almost a twenty percent target chare in Week four against Philadelphia, and now he's finishes at least in RB two in every single outing this year, and now this week, McKinnon gets Miami. The Dolphins are well below average and adjusted fantasy points against, and the forty nine ers also have an implied team total of twenty seven and a half points, so you should be playing him this week. I'm also into my guy, Antonio Gibson. He saw a season high seventy two percent running back rush share last week week and that was matched with a season high eleven point four percent target share. They're using him more and more This is exactly what we wanted to happen, and that's good news against the Rams, who have been good against the pass, but they've been not great against running backs this year. They ring sixteenth in points allowed to the position, so they look like an average matchup, but when you adjust that for strength of opponent, that ranking jumps to fifth, so they're the fifth most advantageous matchup. Gibson is a solid RB two this week for most teams. Now, if you need to go a little bit further than that, you could look at JK. Dobbins. The Bengals aren't anything special against the run. They've actually allowed the fourth most running back rushing yards this year, and the Ravens are big twelve and a half point favorites. If that positive game script hits, then you could see more runs and that could be big for Dobbins since he's coming off a game where he saw his running back rush chair jump back up to over twenty percent while also seeing a nine percent target share. He's certainly a deeper play, but I don't totally totally mind him if you're in a pinch. And then my ultra deep play of the week is Dontrell Hilliard Deerness. Johnson was a popular waiver rad this week. I mean I talked about him on my fifteen Transactions episode, but I also talked about Hilliard. Hilliard only played too fewer snaps than Johnson this past week. There's this massive gap in ranking between the two running backs. But it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Hilliard outproduce him this week, especially given the two players overall athletic profiles. The matchup's not great and that game environment against the Colts might suck, but I at least wanted to use this opportunity to say that I think that we might be overstating the Johnson versus Hilliard dynamic. Now on the flip side, Nahim Hines is RB twenty nine over on Fantasy Pros this week, and that seems high. Like I just said, I don't really love that game against the Browns just in general, with both teams being on the run heavy side they ranked twenty fourth and thirtieth and neutral script pass to run ratio and both teams ranking the bottom half of the league and situation neutral pace, so they're slow and they like to run the football. That's not great. And Heinz's peripherals aren't even that good. I mean, they're not terrible. He's averaging an eleven and a half percent target share per game since that big Week one outing, but he's averaged a sixteen percent of the team's running back rushes over this time. I'd rather be playing someone like Chase Edmonds this week, and then lastly a running back there's Rex Burkhead. Damian Harris is likely to be the early down guy in that offense. He had a good game on Monday, but James White being back in week four really did hurt Burkehead. In weeks two and three, Burkehead had target chairs of thirteen percent and thirty six percent. On Monday night, it was under three percent. James White, meanwhile was at a near twenty three percent target share, and White played fourteen more snaps. Burkehead watches snapshare go from seventy point eight percent in week two to forty six percent in week three, all the way down to thirty five percent this past week. He saw some red zone work, but I still wouldn't have a ton of confidence in him in this Week five game, at least compared to where he's being ranked, which is RB thirty two. In PPR formats. I really hope this is the week for Marquise Brown because, like I said in the fifteen Transactions episode, the peripherals are there. He has a twenty six and a half percent target share in the season, he ranks seventh in total air yards. It's all there. The numbers are there. With a plus matchup against a Bengals secondary that's been the ninth friendliest to opposing wide receivers in terms of Fantasy points allowed, I'd find a way to get Hollywood in my lineup. The big game is coming. Another fifteen Transactions player from this week was Darius Slayton, and I love him against the Cowboys. As I mentioned in the show, Slayton ranks in the top twenty in air yards on the year, and he's got a target share over twenty percent. Meanwhile, Dallas is a top five team that you want your wide receivers to go against. You want to play your guys against this Cowboys defense, and what should be a negative game script for the Giants given this point spread, I think Slayton should walk into a seven or eight target game and against this defense, that means he can have a big day. Jamison Crowder is currently being ranked around Brandon Cooks in the high thirties, and I think it probably has to do with Joe Flacco, but I still think he's a fine play. He's ranked as the wide receiver nine and the wide receiver eighteen and his two games played so far this year and Arizona his opponent ranked sixth and percentage of targets that have gone to the slot this year, so a good number of looks are going to that area of the field and that's where Jamison Crowder has played eighty percent of his snaps this season. Maybe Flacco is like incredibly incredibly bad, but Crowder should still be able to see a good number of looks in this game. And speaking of the slot, the last player that I want to mention at wide receiver on the positive end is Randall Cobb. The Texans are facing the Jags this week and Jacksonville has seen the second highest target rate to the slot this season. That's where Cobb, according to Pro Football Focus, has played eighty three percent of his snaps. And Cobb's been relatively involved in this Texans offense this year. After his Week one game where he had a sub ten percent target chair, He's hit about a fifteen percent share in each of his last three games, so I like him more as a desperation play. This week, let's talk about Jarvis Landry. He's got an eighteen point three percent target share this season. Not amazing, but I guess it's not terrible. He just hasn't done a whole lot. Aside from throw a dime to Odell Beckham, he only has five deep ball targets, and if not from that passing touchdown last week, he'd rank thirty six their worst and weekly wide receiver scoring every single week this year. Now he gets a Colts defense that's been third best in terms of adjusted Fantasy points allowed to wide receivers. I'm just not feeling him this week. The same goes for t Y Hilton. I don't know how you can confidently put Hilton in the top thirty, which is where he is right now, when he hasn't finished a game that high since the middle of the twenty nineteen season. I talked about this on the ten Trend Show, but I wanted it to be noted that he's still being ranked really high when everything suggests that he shouldn't be. If he goes off on your bench, great. At least you know he's capable. But I would play guys John Brown and Russell Gage and Jamison Crowder and Laviska Channault barring injury over t Y Hilton this week. So I mentioned Eric Ebron last week. His game wasn't played, but I do like him this week as a streamer. He's seen his target share rise in each game this season, up to a twenty percent target share in Week three, and he gets an Eagles defense this week that's been very, very bad against tight ends this year. We had Kittle last week against them, We had the big Tyler Higbee game against them. Logan Thomas was a tight end seven in Week one against Philadelphia. Ebron works as a streamer with touchdown upside, But if you want to dig deeper than Ebron, Ian Thomas kind of works. I say kind of because you've really got to be desperate to use him, But I do think he's a deep play. The Falcons have been the absolute worst team at defending tight ends this year according to adjusted Fantasy points allowed. We saw what Robert Tanian did to them last week, and to reiterate what I said about Bridgewater earlier, this is a fun scoring environment, this game could see a lot of pole points. Like Ebron, We've seen Thomas start to get a little bit more involved in that offense, where he hit a season high fourteen percent target share last week, and according to PFF, Thomas has also been running a reasonable number of routes. He has twenty five the last two weeks, so I think the matchup in his slight uptick in usage makes him a sleeper this week. On defense, you've got to use the Arizona Cardinals against Joe Flacco. Basic process shows us that the Cardinals are seven point favorites. There's a forty six and a half point over under, which is low these days, and the Jets rank third worst and pressure rate allowed this year. They're a strong play this week the Arizona Cardinals defense. And then you could also go with the Dallas Cowboys. I know I mentioned Houston on the fifteen Transaction Show this week, but I think that I like Dallas more even though the defense is terrible. Daniel Jones is a turnover machine, and the Giants have allowed pressures at a top ten rate in the league. The Cowboys are not in a bad spot this week as big favorites. That's going to do it for today's show, though. Thanks thanks to all of you for listening. If you've yet subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. You don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone. One more episode this week, the Mailbag episode, and NAT drops tomorrow morning